Recently, we’ve been attempting to make the CSEC website really, really fast. So far, we’ve accomplished:
Minifying our JavaScript so that they load faster. Sometimes, twice as fast.
Reducing the size of our webfonts by 83%. Eighty-three percent. We didn’t think it was possible, but apparently it is.
Separating the styles that make our site colourful from the styles that make our site flow, so when you switch between themes it keeps the flow (unlike before).
Loading all of our assets asyncronously so that they doesn’t block the page content from loading. It might not actually be faster, but it sure feels a lot faster.
Clandestinely installing rockets on the GitHub Pages servers. OK, that’s a lie.
Our home page now ranks somewhere within the 97th percentile of all websites in terms of loading speed.
Given that that’s better than I’ll ever achieve on the Senior CCC, I think it’s pretty impressive. But of course, we can do better.
Unfortunately, to do better, we need to do some live testing that might break the entire site and be super embarrassing.
That’s why we’re shutting the CSEC site down for an hour on January 7, 2018, from 4pm to 5pm EST.
We can guarantee, though, that if we succeed, we’ll be faster than ever before. Maybe we’ll even break into the 99th percentile. We’ll see.
What exactly are you doing?
We’re testing using rawgit.com to deliver all of our static assets (i.e. CSS, JS) and get around GitHub’s 10 minute cache limit.
To do so, we’re splitting up the build process, so that static assets go on a separate branch where they can be retrieved by rawgit.
Why do you need to shut down the site to do this? Can’t you just do it on the fly like the other changes you made?
It’s good practice to test major changes to the build process or site structure before deployment, to root out bugs and other little nasties that may pop up.
However, while those changes could be (and were) rigorously tested on a local machine, these changes can only be tested live.
In effect, we don’t have a chance to flush out whatever nasties might be in our code before deploying it, so we’d rather shut down the site for a bit to do the necessary post-deployment testing.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps not.
But in this age of webpages weighing megabytes and taking 15 seconds to load, we think it’s a worthy cause to try and slim down as much as possible.
Our first meeting is scheduled to be this Friday, October 6 after school in room 206, which is next to room 205, which is across the hallway between 208 and 204 in the business/tech hall.
We’ll be explaining more about the club and about Computer Science, we’ll iron out signup discrepancies, and if logistics allow the Coding subclubs will be splitting up to work on getting set up for the year.
We strongly suggest you attend this meeting, though if you are unable to, we will send out a recap email with any important information attached.
Welcome to Markville CSEC’s brand new website!
We’re still moving in and getting accustomed to our new setting, and this site is not yet totally complete, so please bear with any issues you see.
If, in particular, you have any suggestions and bugs to report, please click the “?” at the bottom-right of your screen.
What’s ready and what’s not
Subclubs
As of publication date, there are only two visible subclubs: Beginners’ and Advanced.
We will be adding the Artificial Intelligence and Nuances of Programming subclubs at a later date, pending their existence.
If you’re wondering where the Web Development subclub went, it has unfortunately been discontinued for the 2017-2018 school year.
Lessons
We have ported all of the Beginners’ lessons, and are in the process of porting Advanced lessons.
This process should be complete by the end of September.
Resources
The Beginners’ resources have all been ported; however, kinks exist to be ironed out.
As well, you may notice that the guides are empty; we’re currently working on writing them. Stay tuned!
Miscellaneous
There’s still a few bits left to polish; in particular, search doesn’t work yet, which is something we’re actively trying to fix.
As well, we will be updating the hero backgrounds over the next few weeks with new images and visualizations from a select group of students.
Check back frequently to see what we’re up to!